Curing the Common Cold
by Lavender and Hay
Summary: The two times Grace Carter found Roland Brett in a compromising situation.


**This is an idea that wouldn't eave me alone****about that moment that I love in one of the episode when Grace walks in and Roland's not wearing his shirt. I hope you like it. (I will get round to my Downton prompts soon). **

The first time she walks in on him in a compromising position, it is compromising more because of what it makes her feel than what it precisely entails. Opening the door without knocking, as she has become increasingly given to doing since she was made Matron, she finds him shirtless, bare to the chest except for a bandage he is unwinding and then winding carefully around his own chest to apply his liniment. He has cold, and she feels a jolt of arousal at the sight of his pale, well-defined body in the light coming in through the blind. She's always known that she desired him, but the effect of seeing someone's bare flesh for the first time, like this; the effect is difficult to gage until it happens, and then of course it is too late. She knows it would be most courteous, and that it would best show that she was unperturbed at the sight, if she offered to help him. But she did not, at this moment, trust herself to touch him.

So she goes about his office, as best she can, quite as if she'd walked in to find him wearing his shirt, tie and braces at the very least.

The second time she does it, it is more difficult to ignore. For the principle reason that, when she enters this time before waiting for his reply, he is naked, sitting in a steaming tin bath in the centre of the room. There are no screens pulled around him, and he turns abruptly to see her surprised face looking back at him.

She manages to close the door, but that is about as much as she does before she finds herself at a loss for what to say of do again.

"I thought you'd gone to bed," he told her, at last.

"No," she shook her head, "Not yet."

"I thought a really hot bath would do me good," he explained, stupidly, "After my cold."

She wanted, as she had done before, to try and treat this as if it were normal; as if she had walked in to find nothing more than him sitting at his desk; as if her blood were not surging beyond her control.

"Of course," she agreed, with him, crossing to the side of the room as she had done before, making to busy herself with some manual task, "How are you feeling now?"

Even as she passed him, she saw a fleeting look of alarm on his face and she kept her back turned.

"Better," he replied, "Thank you."

He did not sound much better, in all honesty.

"Roland," she told him gently, before taking the kettle to the fire and boiling it up again to refill his bath, "I've seen a naked man before. It comes with the territory."

"I know," he replied haltingly.

Placing the kettle on the stove, she half turned to him.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked him.

He paused for too long to make "yes" a credible answer.

"I don't require you to," he told her.

"Do you want me to go?" she asked him again.

"No," he answered her at last.

The kettle was begging to steam. Wrapping the handle back up in the towel, she lifted it and brought it over towards the bath.

"Sit forwards," she told him, "I don't want to burn you."

He did as she bid him and she emptied the contents of the kettle into the tin bath. Steam rose again out of the water, but that did not prevent her seeing, for a moment, the patch of soap still sitting on his lower back. And she didn't think at all, she just reached out, as if he had been one of her patients.

"Here," hooking her sleeve up to the elbow so it did not get wet, pushing her palm gently against his skin to remove the remaining bubbles, "You've missed a bit."

She was leaning close enough to him to hear his breathing falter, hearing him try to keep it under control.

"Roland?" she asked him, "What's- Oh…."

Instinctively she had stood up, sensing the discomfort she was causing him, seeking to put distance between them, as she would with anyone else. As she stood, though, she could not help but catch sight of his lap. He was aroused.

Quickly, he tried to cover himself as best he could, looking up at her imploringly.

"Grace," he told her, "I'm sorry, I-…"

"It's my fault," she insisted, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-… I didn't think."

"I should have told you to leave," he told her.

"You said you wanted me to stay," she reminded him, standing over him, looking down into his eyes.

"I did," he replied, "It was the truth."

She could not stop looking at him, at all of him, and it seemed he could not stop looking at her. And suddenly, she was lowering herself again, kneeling on the floor next to the tub.

"Roland," she murmured softly, "Do you want me to touch you now?"

"Only if you want t-…"

She fixed him with a piercing gaze.

"Do you want me to touch you?"

"Yes," he murmured, in little more than a whisper, "Touch me."

She cupped his hand in her palm only a moment before she let her other hand touch his lap, in the midst of steam rising out of the little tub. He let out a ragged breath, which she caught with the first sensual brush of the curve of her lip against his.

"I love you," he whispered, "I want to touch you as well."

She smiled, pulling his lips back against hers, continuing to touch him intimately.

"Then you'll have to get out of that bath," she told him gently, "Because I certainly won't fit in there."

"Alright," he told her, standing promptly, "That seems fair enough."

A kind of madness had overcome him. Forgetting his recent illness, he barely even bothered to towel his body try before following her, catching up with her, tugging her by the hand down onto the thick carpet in front of the fire. He made very short work of her dress and undergarments indeed; his body was still steaming a little from the heat of the bath as they touched skin to skin.

"I love you, Grace," he whispered, rolling her beneath him, pressing himself against her entrance, "I love you."

"I love you too," she moaned, hooking her arms around his back and up to his shoulders, pulling him closer to her, pushing their chests together, "And you've been driving me mad all week."

"How so?" he asked, rolling his hip just a little so his excitement pressed against her heat again and she let out a gasp.

"Coming in here," she told him, between laboured breaths, "Finding you in here with no shirt on."

He smiled at her.

"You're making quite a habit of that, Matron Carter," he murmured quietly, pressing a kiss to her breast.

"You don't exactly seem sorry," she pointed out to him, as levelly as she could.

He met her eyes.

"I'm not," he replied, sincerely, "I love you."

And then he was with her.

**Please review if you have the time.**


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